Hierarchical Homogeneous Computing Environment for Educational Institutions

Abstract

The fast developments of computer software, hardware, and networks have significantly increasing the challenge of management and security issues in the computing environment of educational institutions. Due to the tight coupling of hardware and software, hundreds of homogeneous and heterogeneous computers have to be administrated individually, leading to a high total cost of ownership. Recently, virtualization of system and storage has become more and more important on the way to improve system reliability and availability, which can reduce hardware and administrated costs, and provide more flexibility on the maintenance of computing environment. This paper explains the system and storage virtualization to produce a Hierarchical Homogeneous Computing Environment (HHCE), which can reduce the administrated complexity and software maintenance time. In addition, it also improved the system availability, and enhanced the system security. To realize the HHCE, the computation and storage are separated. Thus all the operation systems and applications are centered on the servers and all of the client data are store on local storages or cloud storages. Therefore, the installation, maintenance, and administration can be centralized in the computer center. The real-world experiences demonstrate that this approach can reduce hardware and administrated costs, and provide more flexible computing environment for educational institutions.